Retailers face a challenge when trying to tailor their physical shopping environments to better suit the needs and desires of shoppers. In the past, collection and analysis of data on shopper behavior within shopping environments have been problematic. Prior art methods involving physically counting and tracking customers using observers placed at various locations throughout the store have proved costly, ineffective, and error-prone. Prior art systems that featured automated tracking systems suffered from the drawback that they did not offer the retailer meaningful analysis of the collected data, and provided no ability to compare data from different retail environments.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a shopping environment analysis system and method that assists retailers in molding their shopping environment to meet users' needs and maximize the return on investment.